Thank you for the question, Mr. Brock.
Just to be really crystal clear, the bill's proposed changes in this clause are sentencing amendments that relate to a sentencing outcome for a specific offender. They require the court to look at the particular circumstances of that offender and whether the mandatory minimum penalty that would apply in those cases would be cruel and unusual with respect to that offender. Mr. Baber talked about that.
A constitutional challenge to a mandatory minimum penalty would be launched separately from this provision, which, as I said, is a sentencing provision, and would follow the same approach that exists in jurisprudence today. The court would look at the particular circumstances of the specific offender before the court, and then they would go on to the reasonable hypothetical analysis.
In one of my comments last week, what I emphasized, though, is that what we expect would happen in those circumstances is that when analyzing the particular circumstances of a reasonablely foreseeable case, a reasonable hypothetical, the court would have resort to the fact that, in that reasonably foreseeable case, a court would be able to depart from the MMP if, in the circumstances of that offender, it would amount to cruel and unusual.
Although they can, as we understand it, undertake, in a constitutional analysis, an analysis of a reasonable hypothetical case, the outcome would still be the same, because the court would still, as part of its consideration, be able to avail itself of the escape clause.